The Reddit Q&A Makes Me Nervous

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Much like the gentleman before who gave us such a beautiful example of missing the forest for the trees, here we see a pristine example of a straw man.

I never said that. If you intend to use my words, the 'quote' button at the end of my posts should suffice.

I don't care if Battlefield sold 50 million copies. Hell, as long as we're having fun with numbers, let's say it sold 100 million. Not that any of it matters, because all that proves is that 100 million people wanted to play Battlefield. And the nice thing is, if those people want to play Battlefield, there's a game for it. It's called Battlefield. You may have heard of it; it sold 100 million copies.

My concern (note here how I'm citing opinion) is that when you provide a product that is "almost like X but with a twist" then you're setting yourself up for, if not a disaster, than a slow, lingering failure. You may capture some initial attention from people saying "dude, try out PS2; it's just like the BF we know and love, but it's in SPACE with LASERS!" but your actual retention is going to be the biggest issue. What keeps those players from just wandering back to the genuine article when the differences between the two start becoming intolerable for those who rely on the type of gameplay match-based military shooters provide? Planetside is VERY different, and I have a hard time believing SOE stands to steal any market share from the Coddlefield universe.

So what are we left with? Well, we have the people like me who will buy into anything with Planetside written on it. Only, I stopped playing the Coddlefield games for a very good reason; quite a few of those reasons are rearing their ugly heads in these Q&A sessions and gameplay demos. I haven't touched it, so I have no direct experience to ground my feelings, but I can tell you that it has me feeling grim.

What you're targeting, when you model your game after another, is a very specific crowd of people. Folks who are into huge global sci-fi shooters like Planetside, and gritty military match-based shooters like Coddlefield. My feeling is that SOE is overestimating the amount of overlap there really is, there.

All that said, I am also bemoaning the trend in game development we are seeing with every new release of games being steadily dumbed down. Compare the newest Deus Ex to the first. Compare the newest Elder Scrolls to Morrowind. Compare ME3 to ME1. In every sense you see that the newer properties are sacrificing complexity for a more glossy, streamlined experience that while instantly more gratifying, seems to carry generally less impact than the older titles.

Or maybe you welcome the new age of 'shinier, simpler, less complexity'. In which case you and I are of completely different breeds, will probably never come to an agreement, and I weep for the death of what I once loved.

Look, you are probably right, we won't ever come to an agreement. However you fail to realize that SOE is a company that aims to make money, both to pay it's employee's and to fund further growth. The game needs to make money.

Your position that the game should be less streamlined, less shiny, more complex only fails to make the game more accessible to a larger audience. You want and love "niche" games. Games like EVE, Dwarf Fortress, PS1 even.

Niche games have their place. They are fun, exciting, and immerse you in ways that make you seem creepy when you crawl out of your cave 2 days later. However, these games do not draw the crowds that PS2 seeks to draw and needs in order for the game to survive and not become the wasteland that PS1 is.

This is the big picture for Planetside 2. It's been stated by Higby and T-Ray in nearly every interview. PS2 has to set the bar for what an MMOFPS is. To do that it has to trump your standard FPS's by taking their bar and pulling it up to a massive scale.

Your "forest" or whatever you call your fantasies only exist in your head. And I have to address this because you and the bittervets and rosy eyed nostalgia lovers like you, will kill this game and poison the community, alienating people who don't agree with you.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Marsgrim

I'm not an advocate of the break down posts and argue single points because Sheppy has already pointed out that this never actually addresses the argument, it just becomes a diversion.

What I will say is this, number of players, graphics, terrain design and minor cosmetic modifications to weapons (fire more for less damage or less for more) does not make for a more satisfying game experience. Game play and game experience is far more important than graphics and crafted terrain and the myriad of other small concerns.

That's fine. I don't expect you to refute my post point by point. I'd just like to know what you mean by a "more satisfying game experience". I simply brought up some examples of what I see as great improvements to the original Planetside. So far all I've heard as a criticism is that it is "the devs mention Battlefield too much".

What is it lacking in gameplay? Simply saying that it is too much like Battlefield is far to vague for me to understand.

[ItsTheSheppy]

My last post for a while; I need to get work done at SOME point today.

Originally Posted by Raymac

What more "newness" are you looking for?
-The game will support 2-3 times as many more players fighting at once.
-It will have a MUCH higher level of detail in graphics.
-The terrain itself is being designed with far more detail and care.
-The bases are completely different from the single cookie cutter base that PS1 had. (let's face it, all the bases were the same exact thing with only minor variations to the floor plan, otherwise a tech plant was identical to an amp station)
-There will be actual customization of both guns and vehicles in both function and form.
-We will fight over and capture territory instead of just bases which means we will actually use the whole map instead of just the immediate area around the bases.
- and much much more as the infomercials like to say.

I'm wondering, honestly, what were you looking for? From what I see, they are taking the core elements of PS1 (massive numbers, combined arms, 3 factions, large maps) and turning it up to 11 with a graphics quality that makes my jaw drop.

-Supporting more players is nice. I wouldn't consider it an innovation. Especially since they will be using 'shards' to parse their community. Call me when they develop elegant technology to support, say, a thousand people per empire. That's an innovation. More poeple per fight is, at this point, an expectation it would have been criminal not to meet.

-Graphical detail does not matter to me. In the first PS1 I turned DOWN the graphics to get better frames. I play Minecraft happily and for hours on end. Graphics are perhaps last on my list of concerns.

-The level of detail in the geography makes for nice screenshots and I'm sure will be quite immersive, but they don't speak to how capable the game will be to customer retention.

-The bases in PS1, while sporting the same textures and furniture, were arranged very differently from each other. If you put me in one right now I could tell you just by taking one corner in a corridor what facility it was and what would be the best way to assault it. Could they have been designed better? Absolutely. But at least there were lots, and variety is the spice of life.

-Weapon attachments... That's nice, but where before they could have multiple different kinds of vehicles, now we will have one with multiple attachments. I have yet to play a game where this made things feel a great deal different from a gameplay level. Whether my AK47 has a grenade launcher or a laser sight did not make me enjoy the game any more or less. It's a minor point that I find uninteresting, and only worth noting in that it sounds like it's being offered as an excuse for not just making two different fully-realized weapons or vehicles. "We don't need to design a fully-realized bomber; we'll just let you toss bombs from the plane you already have" or something similar.

-Resource gathering sounds good on paper, but having not seen any of it in action I cannot really comment on it, as I said before. I do like the sound of it; Hell, I have to like SOMETHING, otherwise why would I care enough to even post this crap?

With the notable exception of resource control, I'm not really seeing much in there that's new or particularly innovative; that is, something we've never seen somewhere before, or done better. Planetside looks good; Battlefield will probably look better. I'm sorry, but DICE has more money.

Now, what would I like? What am I looking for?

PS1 + one more. I don't want fewer facilities. I want more; maybe every facility could be a unique building. I don't want FEWER continents... and if there are fewer, make them bigger with numerous environs; the 'forest level, desert level, ice level' crap won't fly. I don't want fewer vehicles; I want more. I don't want less complexity in player choice and freedom to customize loadouts; I want more.

Perhaps most importantly, I don't want Planetside to ask "How can we be more like Call of Duty or Battlefield?" I want it to ask, "How can we make Planetside so awesome people will talk about us instead of those games?" You won't get there by imitating. You'll get there by innovating. I want the team to forge ahead with an identity unique to Planetside, like the first one was. It wasn't perfect but it was UNIQUE, and we loved it for that; I have a hard time feeling this new imitation work will inspire the same affection, and as a result, player retention will suffer.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Now, what would I like? What am I looking for?

PS1 + one more. I don't want fewer facilities. I want more; maybe every facility could be a unique building. I don't want FEWER continents... and if there are fewer, make them bigger with numerous environs; the 'forest level, desert level, ice level' crap won't fly. I don't want fewer vehicles; I want more. I don't want less complexity in player choice and freedom to customize loadouts; I want more.

Perhaps most importantly, I don't want Planetside to ask "How can we be more like Call of Duty or Battlefield?" I want it to ask, "How can we make Planetside so awesome people will talk about us instead of those games?" You won't get there by imitating. You'll get there by innovating. I want the team to forge ahead with an identity unique to Planetside, like the first one was. It wasn't perfect but it was UNIQUE, and we loved it for that; I have a hard time feeling this new imitation work will inspire the same affection, and as a result, player retention will suffer.

Thank you for the clear, calm response. I won't go through the bullet points, because like you said, that distracts us from the core point. I do just want to say that wanting 3000 people instead of "only" 2000 people sounded a bit silly to me.

I also think you are making a false assumption in that the devs sit around thinking "how can we make Planetside more like Battlefield?" However, I think it is likely that considering Planetside is 9 years old, that they did look at the current popular shooters, but that type of market research is common for any game not made by a small indie company.

And I think that might be your main complaint, that SOE isn't acting more like an indie company in making Planetside 2. Obviously they are taking a substantial risk in making a unique game, (nobody else has made a game even remotely like this) but it's just not unique enough for your tastes.

We'll have to agree to disagree that Planetside 2 is a copy of Battlefield. And while you predict that Planetside 2 will lose players as soon as the next shooter comes out, I predict that Planetside 2 will be far more successful and have a much longer and stronger life than its predecessor.

[ItsTheSheppy]

I do just want to say that wanting 3000 people instead of "only" 2000 people sounded a bit silly to me.

Just a quick addendum, I was just tossing numbers out. Call it 10,000 people if it helps my point get across any better.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

Just a quick addendum, I was just tossing numbers out. Call it 10,000 people if it helps my point get across any better.

I see what you are saying, but I still think it is silly considering every other shooter out there has a max of 64 players. 2000, 3000, 10000, 1000000000. It doesn't matter. It is still a HUGE leap in numbers.

[Sheppe]

ItstheSheppy 's name confuses me

[ItsTheSheppy]

Originally Posted by Sheppe

ItstheSheppy 's name confuses me

Sorry. You can call me Guru if you like; that was my PS handle. It's at the bottom of my posts, too.

[Aurmanite]

An important thing to remember is that Planetside 2's goal is to make SoE money. SoE will not make money off a free-to-play Planetside 2 if it sucks. That is their incentive to do it right. They cannot gouge us if they aren't charging us to play.

After reading all the posts since I've been in class I'm still completely shocked by the continual references to Battlefield. The ADS (aim down sights), the shooting, the recoil, people shooting at each other, all of those things we saw in the GDC demo aren't unique to Battlefield, COD, or any one of the hundreds of shooter games that exist today. Shooters are shooters. You can't say that Planetside 2 is copying Battlefield because it has FPS elements. It doesn't make any sense. Planetside 2 is going to be an FPS.

When the original was released in 2003 the shooting mechanics felt old, like they were a throwback to 2-3 years prior. They were clunky and unresponsive compared to games from that time period. Unreal, Quake, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor were all vastly superior shooters in 03. They were not massively multiplayer though, which is why we (meaning I, and the other shooter fans that stuck around at the time) looked beyond this short coming and continued to play. FPSing in Planetside was unique, but it was not good.

I struggle to understand why there is such a focus on how many bases, vehicles, and maps are being left out of #2.

The bases in Planetside were terrible. They were obviously designed by people who had little experience with FPS's and had no idea how their designs would play out when you stuffed a few hundred people in them. Base/level design in Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Counter-Strike, Tribes 2, and Team fortress Classic were way ahead of any of the facilities in Planetside. In #2, the bases look like they've been made by a professional FPS developer. They look like they will give us way more game play and freedom than all of the bases combined in the original. There are fewer, but isn't that a small price to pay for them being drastically better?

I've covered vehicles in several threads, but from what has been confirmed right now, the only ground vehicle missing from Planetside is the harasser and deliverer variants. Gone are the flat, shallow, single role vehicles. They've been replaced with platforms that we can customize to fit our style of play. It gives the vehicles depth, the ability to have more than one function. Why is this type diversity such a bad thing? Isn't the lack of diversity one of the main points brought up in discussion of the class system vs the cert system? Higby's air-to-ground Reaver has a completely different feel and playstyle than someone who has decided to outfit his Reaver for an air-to-air. What's the point of having two vehicles for these roles?

I would like to see more continents at release, but I understand that better quality maps and a sooner release date is the trade off I have to accept.

To be fair, Planetside was not unique for its game play mechanics. It was a little bit of Tribes, a little bit of Unreal, and a little bit of Team Fortress and MoH. It was unique because it put these elements into a large and persistent world.

You can say "Planetside was unique" because it certainly was. But if you strip the MMO portion out, you are left with a uniquely terrible game by 2003 standards.

[ItsTheSheppy]

I don't know if I disagree with a lot of what you just said, though I think you're looking a little too closely at the silver lining and missing just how big the cloud might be. Perhaps that makes me a glass-half-empty kind of person, but I'll be damned if I'll not at least try to get a little more water in mine if I can do it.

I'm not suggesting, nor have I ever suggested, that the PS1 bases were great or should be copied over. Some were good, some weren't, but they weren't terrible. A lot of the bummer fights people probably remember when it came to bases were due to they being too difficult to penetrate from the outside, such as interlinks. That was just a result of the TTK and AoE's and so forth.

It's worth pointing out that when PS1 was released, however, they released it with all those bases, good or bad. The effort was there, and the variety was there. Releasing a game with only three bases and three conts, that is supposedly a 'taking it to the next level' game, just looks shoddy. Like they were rushed, or lacked the funding, to do it properly. It reeks of cut corners and piles of ideas left on the cutting room floor.

Furthermore, the game mechanics of PS1 may not have been perfect but they were good for what they wanted to do. The game flowed properly. There was quibbling over balance, because there will always be quibbling over balance, forever, until the end of time, but people were generally happy with the TTK and so forth. And when you break it down, the TTK was important for the pace of battle and how well defenses and offensives could be structured; how the game ebbed and flowed.

I'm not suggesting we're being gouged; if SOE was going to gouge one of their populations, they'd do it to EQ, who represent a wider share of their base. No, I'm suggesting that the creative direction and fundamental mechanic choices were bad. Not evil, just bad. Perhaps due to laziness, or due to a creative vacuum from the important decision makers, or whatever. Personally, I'm fine with blaming Higby. Here is a guy who got his start as a QA tester, found himself attached to one failed project after another and then through what I can only call divine intervention, became the top dog for a major property. And this is a guy who cannot shut up about how much he loves him some Battlefield and, oh would you look at that; the game looks like it plays almost exactly like Battlefield, if you ran it through a Planetside filter.

Add in a lot of the specific design choices being made; reducing the number of vehicles by combining roles in ways that stretch logical reasoning, limiting player options when kitting themselves out, simplifying the leveling process by cribbing entirely from another property, etc., and it creates the image in my mind of a rushed product.

Compare, if you would, to the development happening over at ArenaNet. You listen to those interviews and read those design documents, and what you don't see are developers saying, "I played a lot of WoW and though, man, wouldn't it be cool if our game was like that?" No instead they say, "In this game you have to do this stuff, which sucks, so we're making it better". Or, alternatively, presenting brand-new ideas never before seen or tried. Taking risks off of innovative ideas, essentially.

Some may work. Some may not. Time will tell. But I get the impression that the approach at PS2 has been a lot less about taking a formula and improving, rather than just cribbing notes, throwing it together, and hoping it comes out in the wash.

It's not a copy of Battlefield. It just copies a lot of its elements while not presenting any ideas at all of improving them short of just attaching them to an existing design, e.g. Planetside 1. It does not inspire confidence.

[Aurmanite]

We definitely are on opposite sides of the same coin. To this point I've been...mostly...impressed by what I have seen and read about the game.

It takes all kinds.
Amirite?

[ItsTheSheppy]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

We definitely are on opposite sides of the same coin. To this point I've been...mostly...impressed by what I have seen and read about the game.

It takes all kinds.
Amirite?

I suppose.

It's one of those things where I think we end up just thinking that the other one is drinking some kind of wacky kool-aid.

And you know what the crazy thing is? I want you to be right. I want the game to take off, and have 500,000 concurrent active players, and to put WoW and Coddlefield out of business and be on the cover of Time Magazine.

But because I live in the real world that tends to be a much harsher mistress, my fear is that I'm right, and we're in for some crushing disappointment. And when I say we, I mean me; its entirely possible you and a core group of dedicated believers will love it and play it for hours and hours and hours. Hell, there are people who probably dedicate their full time to Fallen Earth.

I just miss the old days. Before WoW and Coddlefield set the standard by which all other games were judged. It makes me wonder what we could have been playing, rather than what we are. Buncha samey clones, all vying to be the Next Big Thing by wearing last year's fashions, just because WoW and Coddlefield wore them.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

I suppose.

It's one of those things where I think we end up just thinking that the other one is drinking some kind of wacky kool-aid.

And you know what the crazy thing is? I want you to be right. I want the game to take off, and have 500,000 concurrent active players, and to put WoW and Coddlefield out of business and be on the cover of Time Magazine.

But because I live in the real world that tends to be a much harsher mistress, my fear is that I'm right, and we're in for some crushing disappointment. And when I say we, I mean me; its entirely possible you and a core group of dedicated believers will love it and play it for hours and hours and hours. Hell, there are people who probably dedicate their full time to Fallen Earth.

I just miss the old days. Before WoW and Coddlefield set the standard by which all other games were judged. It makes me wonder what we could have been playing, rather than what we are. Buncha samey clones, all vying to be the Next Big Thing by wearing last year's fashions, just because WoW and Coddlefield wore them.

BF3 sold like 11 million copies, and CoD like 20 million...but you know, there are a lot of people following Planetside 2. Lots of people don't bother to sign up for beta, as they just wait for release...so SOE might not know how much interest there truly is.

Can you imagine the login server chaos if hey have a 4 month open beta, slowly phasing in to 500,000 players, then declare official release and 3 million more suddenly come knocking?

If it meets my expectations you can be damn sure I will post on every forum I visit for people to get in the game and forget BF and CoD.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSheppy

I suppose.

It's one of those things where I think we end up just thinking that the other one is drinking some kind of wacky kool-aid.

And you know what the crazy thing is? I want you to be right. I want the game to take off, and have 500,000 concurrent active players, and to put WoW and Coddlefield out of business and be on the cover of Time Magazine.

But because I live in the real world that tends to be a much harsher mistress, my fear is that I'm right, and we're in for some crushing disappointment. And when I say we, I mean me; its entirely possible you and a core group of dedicated believers will love it and play it for hours and hours and hours. Hell, there are people who probably dedicate their full time to Fallen Earth.

I just miss the old days. Before WoW and Coddlefield set the standard by which all other games were judged. It makes me wonder what we could have been playing, rather than what we are. Buncha samey clones, all vying to be the Next Big Thing by wearing last year's fashions, just because WoW and Coddlefield wore them.

It's possible that due to my excitement I quaffed a little of the kool-aid and have become more of a fanboy than I realize. I'm usually cynical as all hell. Once beta is in our lap it won't take long for us to discover the truth.

I dig your sentiment on what we 'could' be playing. I don't necessarily think WoW and 'Coddlefield' are to blame because knock offs and try hards have always been the norm in the industry. I blame it on corporate fat cats and small balled developers. Because...why not?

Eventually there will be the next big thing, and it will be awesome.

[ItsTheSheppy]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

BF3 sold like 11 million copies, and CoD like 20 million...but you know, there are a lot of people following Planetside 2. Lots of people don't bother to sign up for beta, as they just wait for release...so SOE might not know how much interest there truly is.

Can you imagine the login server chaos if hey have a 4 month open beta, slowly phasing in to 500,000 players, then declare official release and 3 million more suddenly come knocking?

If it meets my expectations you can be damn sure I will post on every forum I visit for people to get in the game and forget BF and CoD.

You might wanna go back a few pages and read through more of my posts. You will find a big deal with me is a concept called 'customer retention'.

You can say "It's like Battlefield!" and snag a few thousand players, sure. Let's be generous and say you snag 20,000 players this way.

How many are going to stay when they realize that it's NOT like Battlefield? It doesn't look as good, the fights aren't as reliable as just choosing a 32v32 and hitting 'go', there's all this RPG stuff many modern-day shooter fans have no patience for. Throw in the EVE leveling system that takes away the instant-gratification many of those players crave and you end up with a potentially disastrous situation.

It doesn't matter if you grab the attention of 20,000 players if only 500 of them are left after three months.

Planetside needs to generate a following on its own merits, not my mimicking and cribbing from other, well-established properties. Otherwise all you're going to capture are the minority of players who fall into the overlap in the Venn Diagram between MMO-enthusiasts and Battlefield-enthusiasts. And I'm guessing its a small overlap. I've played with Battlefield players. They're not... deep thinkers, by and large.